It's Mes Chamoru once again, a time when just about everyone enjoys putting a spotlight on the many facets of Chamoru heritage. That spotlight can be bright and powerful, as we see with some of the cultural events organized by the Chamoru teachers in Guam DOE or other community groups. Sometimes it can be a mere sliver, the purchasing of Chamoru pride T-shirt, the making of a particular food, or a business committing to say “si Yu’us ma’åse” as well as “håfa adai” to their customers.

Some of these efforts bring tears to my eyes, others make me cringe. All in some way are important. However, when we reflect back just a few generations ago, Chamorus and others on Guam struggled with expressing positivity around the culture. Much of the negativity stemmed from colonial experiences, where Chamorus over centuries were instructed in both direct and indirect ways to see their identity and culture as being inferior.

It didn’t help that others who made landfall in Guam scarcely felt the need to respect the indigenous people.

We see the legacy of that today, where many non-Chamorus on Guam struggle with the notion that Guam has indigenous people. Although anyone can say the indigenous people of Guam or natives of Guam, how does it manifest in practice or in policy?

For one person, the ethics of their being or their sense of respect to Chamorus may not rise to anything higher than loving kelaguen or using Chamoru slang. For others, it may be about learning to speak Chamoru or supporting Chamoru cultural arts and projects. For far too few, the level of respect reaches the idea that Chamorus should have rights as indigenous people.

We can see progress, however. As I mentioned previously, there was a time, not too long ago, where few people respected the Chamoru language or culture. Anthropologists, missionaries, Navy officers and others shared one mind that Chamorus had no real language or culture, and were just primitive, racial mongrels.

Efforts by many have led to a cultural renaissance, which has profoundly reshaped the way Chamorus see themselves, their place in the universe and the value of what they represent culturally. It has also led to others as seeing a greater vitality and value to Chamoru culture and language, at least in some ways.

Some of this is connected to how the visitor industry sees Chamoru heritage as a resource cache to draw from in their marketing or programming.

This has manifested in Mes Chamoru, a month-long celebration of the continuing of Chamoru possibility and existence that moves from deep and profound one moment, to made from the cheapest cultural plastic the next. What waits on the horizon is a greater political and ethical conversation.

While the wider community in Guam has come to accept the Chamoru as a cultural being, as having a language and culture that should be celebrated or preserved, there remains great progress to be made in terms of that same community understanding and accepting the Chamoru in a more political context – not simply flower-print shirts, shell necklaces or fina’denne, but a people who live and breathe still, deserving of certain rights and redress as the indigenous people of this island.

Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an author, artist, activist and assistant professor of Chamorro studies at the University of Guam.